Canada said it has deported 366 Nigerians between January and October 2025 in an intensified crackdown on its immigration enforcement drive.
Official data obtained from the Canada Border Services Agency removals programme statistics also revealed that 974 Nigerians are currently in the “removal in progress” inventory, awaiting deportation from the country.
The figure updated on November 25, 2025, showed that Nigeria ranked ninth among the top 10 nationalities deported.
A breakdown of the data showed that Nigerian deportations have fluctuated over the years.
In fiscal year 2024-2025, Canada removed 18,048 people, spending approximately $78m in the process.
In 2019, Canada removed 339 Nigerians; this dropped to 302 in 2020, then to 242 in 2021, and to 199 in 2022.
While Nigeria did not feature in the top 10 in 2023 and 2024, it returned to the list in 2025, recording 366 removals in just 10 months.
This represented an eight per cent increase compared to the 2019 figure.
The majority of those being removed, about 83 per cent, are failed refugee claimants whose asylum applications were denied.
Criminality accounts for about four per cent of removals.
It also allocated an additional $30.5m over three years to bolster removal efforts, while committing $1.3bn to enhance border security.
The Canadian government says it is intensifying deportations to tighten immigration targets and address concerns over housing shortages, labour market pressures, and border security.
President of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, Aisling Bondy, had expressed concern that deportations may ramp up further if Bill C-12, also known as the ‘border bill,’ passes.
“One of the clauses in that bill is that a lot of people will be permanently banned from filing a refugee claim in Canada,” Bondy said.
Analysis of the CBSA data revealed that Nigeria is the only African country featured in the top 10 nationalities for deportations in 2025.
Other African nations are grouped under “remaining nationals,” which accounted for 6,233 removals in 2025.
The top 10 countries for removals in 2025 are: Mexico (3,972), India (2,831), Haiti (2,012), Colombia (737), Romania (672), United States (656), Venezuela (562), China (385), Nigeria (366), and Pakistan (359).
Similarly, in the removal-in-progress record, Nigeria (974) is the only African country listed in the top 10. The inventory is led by India (6,515), followed by Mexico (4,650), the United States (1,704), China (1,430), Nigeria (974), Colombia (895), Pakistan (863), Haiti (741), Brazil (650), and Chile (621).
